Martial arts discussion thread

[GoktimusPrime]

You should be standing and moving in proper solid (re: anchored) stances rather than 'shuffling' about like a modern boxer. Your footwork should more closely resemble the way your legs move during katas, and I'm sure you don't shuffle in katas. A common mistake some people make is to stand 'on' their stances rather than 'in' them. The centre of mass/weight should be distributed in a way that it effectively "anchors" or "sinks" the practitioner into the ground. The common analogy is to imagine that you are a tree and that there are roots shooting out from beneath your feet and attached to the ground. This should allow you to better absorb incoming force, or quickly recover if you are upended (e.g. by quickly switching to another stance to regain your balance, or worse case scenario, performing a breakfall).

Now in saying that a person should be rooted in their stance, it doesn't necessarily mean you have to be rock-solid like a statue. One should be solid but fluid at the same time. This is something that I find a lot of schools don't teach properly, the idea of being simultaneously hard and soft. I find all too many people are either too 'hard' and don't move fluidly, or they're too 'soft' and they move with a good flow but insufficient solidity.

Some misinterpretations I've encountered include:
+ You switch between being hard and soft - e.g. when throwing a punch your arm is relaxed (soft), but hardens up on impact (hard).
+ One part of your body is hard, while another is soft - e.g. you are hard from waist down in a solid stance, but soft from waist up as you're punching/blocking etc.
I don't find either explanation to be terribly good, because they seem to view hard/soft like a light switch which means that the two properties are mutually exclusive. They seem to completely miss the point of the Yin Yang which shows hardness and softness being mutually inclusive, and the two dots at the largest portions of the opposites showing that hardness can be found at the height of softness and vice versa. I prefer analogies like looking at a whip or a crashing wave at the beach -- things that are soft in nature but also extremely 'hard' and strong in the amount of force they deliver.

http://www.calasanz.com/strong-martial-arts-stance/

So we want our stances to be strong and solid, but at the same time not "dead." They should also be agile and mobile... but not too mobile that you lose strength in the stance. It's all about striking that balance. There are various different exercises that you can do to practise this. I personally find Tai Chi's Push Hands is quite good.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r59gWTzKSw
^It looks deceptively gentle, but each forward push is actually producing a good amount of force. The object of the activity is to actually shove your opponent off balance with every push. A single mistake can send you flying backwards.

As for the groin strike, that's got more to do with your defensive posture. At virtually no point in a fight should your groin be exposed to an opponent. But we all make mistakes, and unfortunately stuffing up your groin defence is an extremely painful one to make.

[Bartrim]

I've explained our schools policy on groin strikes numerous times to you. One last time. In sparring situations safety is our top priority so we only allow kicks from above the knee to shoulder height with all leg kicks to be on the outside of our partners legs. If you lack the basic control to follow these simple rules then you really shouldn't be doing martial arts

[GoktimusPrime]

I'd genuinely forgotten about that. At the Dojo where I learn Karate, groin strikes are allowed, but head strikes are forbidden in sparring. But we still learn how to defend the head. Having said that... I find that the majority of people I spar with at the Dojo are pretty poor at head defence. It's similar to my experience in sparring with people who don't do groin strikes and have poor groin defence. I think that when you disallow certain attacks, it can make some people complacent in learning to defend themselves from those techniques. I reckon this is why a lot of students at my Dojo are really bad at defending the head. A lot of them are also not good at defending themselves from grappling because we never learn any grappling or breakfalling etc.

I understand and totally agree that safety is a top priority. Martial arts schools have a legal duty of care over their students, I get that. But surely there must be a way to allow certain techniques to be used in a relatively safe(r) manner.
e.g.
+ Using protective equipment such as groin guards, head gear, floor mats etc.
+ Training students to modify attacks in training for safety. e.g. only "tapping" the head with your fists or finger tips (like playing tips in the schoolyard), only striking to the upper inner thighs (so that you're striking next to the groin but not at it) etc.

^JMHO

[Bartrim]

We have tried various techniques in the past. We also don't allow head strikes. We used to allow taps to the head but we found a lot of the newer sparrers had trouble with control. Same with inside leg kicks. Watching a lot of UFC even the professionals have trouble mastering that technique correctly and at each event there are at least 3-4 groin strikes. We do have to wear groin guards but they only prevent permanent injury. They don't stop the pain!

[GoktimusPrime]

Disclaimer: The following post only represents my personal views on my own experience with individual schools. It is not intended to be a broad sweeping criticism on Karate or any other particular martial arts school or system.

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Aaand, I think I'm done with Karate now. To hopefully make a long story short, reasons are:
1) I find the whole grading/belt system is really too counter-productive to learning actual self defence. Classes are structured towards passing tests rather than to practically apply skills.
2) Sensei cannot teach. He is highly knowledgable in traditional Okinawan Karate, which is what drew me to his school in the first place, but he cannot teach it. Reasons for this include:
+ He gets really angry and abusive if you make mistakes (as if it were a personal attack - I'm serious), and of course beginners make the most mistakes and consequently cop the most abuse. The more mistakes you make, the more he rages at you, and the more stressed you get, and the more mistakes you make, which makes him even madder. It's an endless escalating cycle. Honestly... he gets angry if you're less than perfect, but if we were already experts then we wouldn't need him to teach us! Furthermore there's just something really weird about learning to defend myself from bullies and thugs from a teacher who is himself, a thuggish bully. Also, I'm sure we'd all agree that respect is a two way street. I have no respect for anyone who won't respect me, and I no longer wish to pay him any more money to teach^demoralise me. I've also heard anecdotal stories from other students that he's made children cry.
+ He has no concept of proper effectual teaching. His mantra is basically, "Shut up and obey." There's no room for critical/analytical thinking, student based learning, creativity, exploration etc. Quite frankly, if I ever had a student teacher who taught like Sensei, I would most certainly fail that student teacher.

There's a common assumption at the school that because Sensei is highly knowledgable when it comes to traditional Okinawan Karate (which he is), that therefore he's an excellent teacher. This isn't the case. That's like saying that anyone who's a fluent speaker of English can be a great English teacher. Staying with this Dojo means that I would have to endure continued emotional stress at paying a man to rage at me and call it teaching. And really, there's nothing that they've taught me that, in terms of practical skills, have really added to my martial arts repertoire. I already know how to strike, block, evade, parry, grapple, counter-grapple... I would like to have more practise in doing this, but it's unlikely to happen until I pass more grading tests, which means that I need to endure many months (or years) worth of infuriating lessons just to get up to a level that I would find personally productive.

So I'm spending lots of time and money and really not learning anything terribly useful. All the techniques I've learnt I already know how to do -- okay, I do it in a different way, but it still achieves the same outcome. i.e. the way that Tai Chi blocks an incoming medium height punch (Chuudantsuki) is different from Karate's, but they both achieve the same goal (i.e. thwart the attack). I don't see why I need to invest all this time, money and effort to essentially reinvent the wheel. This is quite different from some other martial arts teachers (in schools that don't have grades/belts) who can allow students who've had previous martial arts experience to skip some basic level forms and just start off at a higher level so that they would learn something that would be useful for them. Sure, their basics would differ, but it was a case of "you'll get used to it as you progress" rather than taking them all the way back to square one and starting again. I don't teach Japanese Kanji stroke order to students who are literate in Chinese! There are some differences between Chinese characters used in Chinese and Japanese, but Chinese-literate students can adjust to these differences as they learn the language. There's no real need to go back to the bare basics of learning to write Chinese characters as I would with students who aren't literate in Chinese.

Furthermore I have two situations that are changing next year...
1/ My daughter is starting school, including Saturday school. Karate gradings at the Dojo I go to are ONLY ever held on Saturdays.
2/ I started doing Karate 2 years ago because in 2012 and 2013 I had after school classes on Wednesdays, which is also the only day that my local Yang Tai Chi school runs classes. Due to this schedule clash I decided to try Karate. Next year none of my after school classes are running on Wednesdays, so I think I'll just go back to Tai Chi which is far more productive and intuitive for me. Even though my local Tai Chi school teaches for health/relaxation rather than combat/self defence, I have enough previous knowledge of Tai Chi to retroactively apply their techniques which I can practice in my own time.

Again, none of this is intended to be a criticism against Karate itself, but given my individual circumstances I think it makes more sense for me to just go back to Tai Chi.

[Bartrim]

I haven't posted here in ages as I have been busy with work over summer. At the start of December I went to Parkes for a Kumiai-Ryu tai kai and senior grading day. I had to learn 3 katas. A basic forms kata, a bo staff kata and a grappling sequence. I hate doing kata. I feel so much pressure doing it so I made sure I had them exactly right. I broke them down with my sensei step by step until I could do the bo staff kata with my eyes shut. I get through the grading no problems and it's time to do the kata. The basic and bo katas go off without a hitch. Even to the point of I had a huge grin on my face by the end of the bo kata as I didn't feel any pressure and was having fun doing it. I get to the grappling sequence kata, partner up with another student grading and go to perform the sequence and IT's WRONG! My instructor taught me the wrong kata! He was sitting up with the panel of judges so I turn to him and with a dumbfounded look say "This isn't what I learnt. What do I do?" One of the senior judges yells out "Quiet and just do it!" Thankfully my partner was quite helpful and guided me through. After that we had 10x2 minute rounds of sparring. After about 3 rounds I noticed every time I went to switch partners there would be 3-4 people rushing to get to spar with me. After a couple of more rounds and starting to feel really sore (more so then I expected from the sparring) I noticed that I am the only one with an over abundance of senior students wanting to spar with me. I also notice that I am the only one limping after 6 rounds. I scape through the sparring... just. Thankfully the last guy I sparred was quite gentle on me. After we are awarded our belts everyone is shaking hands and getting photos etc. One of the senior officials "Tashi" Dave asks if he could speak to me. "Of course" I reply. I follow him to a quiet area where he is there with "Shihan" Rob and "Kyoshi" Kevin (our system of school's founder) The proceed to verbally dress me down like I was a 6 year old child for being rude and disrespectful by questioning my Sensei in front of everyone. I insisted that I wasn't being disrespectful merely turning to my Sensei for guidance. They tell me I should of watched the instructional DVD with all the katas on it. I admit that I had the kata wrong but if I show it to my instructor incorrectly and he says it's fine then why would I watch the DVD? They refuse to budge on the subject blaming me 100% saying I need to improve my attitude and that I should count myself lucky one of the senior members didn't knock me out when I disrespected my sensei. Realising I am banging my head against a wall I smile and apologise but in my head I'm smiling and thinking "I wonder what that other martial arts school in town is like?" They forced me to apologise to my sensei in front of them and this was the last straw. All I wanted from him was a little responsibility for teaching me the wrong kata but I got none. Several friends of mine who study martial arts have heard this story and feel I did nothing wrong and understand that I was looking for help in the situation. So now I am training at a school that although it is competition based the training is excellent. they teach Muay Thai and BJJ. Their BJJ is legit too as you can trace back the instructor lineage (something very important in BJJ). This is something I have often questioned about Kumiai-Ryu's BJJ and I've never gotten a straight answer. I have had "red flags" about Kumiai-Ryu pop up over the past 6 months but this grading sealed it for me. I've been training at Southern Fitness and Martial Arts for 3 weeks now and I really enjoy it. A very friendly school as opposed to Kumiai-Ryu and their secret motto of "Are you a black belt? No... Then shut up!". Kumiai-Ryu starts back again next week and I am going back to finish my accreditation, even if I never use I still think it will only benefit me in the future. My ignorant Sensei is going to get a shock when I downgrade my class package from 4 classes a week to 1.

That's my story about what I've been doing for the past month in the martial arts world.

[GoktimusPrime]

Sounds like we've both hit the same wall -- training at schools that value form over substance with a school culture that promotes blind obedience and conformity over independent and higher level critical thinking. And like you, the alternative for me isn't ideal either, but I'd much rather train at a school where I'm not treated like a complete idiot.

[KalEl]

Disclaimer: The following post only represents my personal views on my own experience with individual schools. It is not intended to be a broad sweeping criticism on Karate or any other particular martial arts school or system.

All your posts regarding Martial Arts should start with this gok :P

[Bartrim]

So I am still at Kumiai-Ryu but only about half the time I used to be there. Decided I should at least finish off my instructor accreditation before I completely quit there.

I have to film myself teaching a lesson tonight. Should be interesting.

[GoktimusPrime]

Good luck w/ getting that accreditation. It'd be nice to at least leave Karate with something to show for it.

My work schedule is conflicting with the Yang Tai Chi classes this year. Again. But I've decided not to waste any more money on my local Karate Dojos. I'm just doing informal outside training. Our group has a mix of people from different styles including Karate, Aikido and Wing Chun Kung Fu. It's fun sometimes to mix and combine different techniques -- e.g. I recently used some Aikido footwork with a Tai Chi take down technique to 'force' a highly resistant opponent onto the ground. Aikido stepping is wider and more "arcing" than Tai Chi's, which has more of a "corkscrew" effect to drive the opponent into the ground; whereas Tai Chi's armwork is tighter than Aikido's -- so I found that the combination of Tai Chi upper body movement with Aikido lower body movement better enabled me to bring down stronger opponents who were actively resisting being taken down. I get a lot more benefit from doing this kind of cross training and I don't have to pay for it either.